by SARAH THOMACK
St. Joseph Post
Several Hillyard Technical Center students put on full firefighter gear to climb over a hundred flights of stairs as part of honoring 9/11 emergency responders.
Students in the Fire Science class at Hillyard, each year on September 11th, climb 110 flights of stairs, which represents the number of stairs in the World Trade Center.
“Most of us don’t remember it, obviously. I was, I think, two weeks old,” said Gage Wampler, a senior student in the Fire Science class. “So it’s good to remember… it’s good to do something to honor them.”
EMT instructor Becky Mercer said the tradition was started over 10 years ago as a way to honor and keep the memory alive of those that lost their lives on 9/11.
“It’s part of our history in EMS, that’s just something that’s in all of our curriculum, in all of our books and it’s stuff that we have to look out for and that we’re putting ourselves out there every day, every call that something like that could happen, so it’s always on our minds,” Mercer said. “Those that have lost their life in the line of duty, whether it was in 9/11 or just on a regular call, they’re always in our hearts and we always think about that.”